Review by Justin Goodman of William E.

Jones' True
Homosexual Experiences

They have come to seem like combat veterans, but without medals, because instead of
foreign enemies, they have been fighting the prejudice, pettiness, and hypocrisy of American
society (6). This is a theme that William E. Jonesa passionately and artistically brutish author
and filmmakercomes to time and again in his work, rushing to reassemble the deteriorating
library of the gay artist underground like a 21st century Jean Dubuffet. Hes as markedly
academic as he is politically frustrated given the subjects he attempts to preserve: Heliogabalus,
a Roman emperor whose life was described by German historian B.G. Niebuhr as unspeakably
disgusting; Fred Halsted, whose sadistically sexual L.A. Plays Itself is an underground
masterpiece; homoerotic photographs rejected by the Farm Security Administration. Now,
in True Homosexual Experiences, he attempts to recall the brilliant deviant Boyd McDonald,
whose satirical and explicit pamphlet, Straight to Hell, professed not a dogma of the powerful,
as Jones writes, but his own truth, the truth of the body (189).
Unlike the professed truth of the body that typically comes to mind when thinking of
gay artists though (whitened Walt Whitman, humbly sexual, gently declares I sing the body
electric; McDonalds contemporary, the wolfish, prophetic Ginsbergs alcohol and cock and
endless balls), Jones prefers men who are more raucous, guided by political-realism more
than lart por lart. The reality of absence may be more accurate in this instance, since Boyd
lived outside the purview of the authorities (187). Including the authority of Jones himself, as
he traces Boyds life, birth to death. From the little of what can be learned about Boyds early
life com[ing] from public records and newspapers (10), to the only reference of his time in the
army in WWII in a 1990 article about one of the biggest rods Ive seen (13); from a
surprisingly sparse rendering of his time at Harvard asJones sounds almost begrudged on his
subjects behalfan army veteran from the Great Plains rather than a scion of the east coast
elite, fail[ing] to fit in (19), to a post-Harvard journalism career, almost equally brief, that ends
in alcoholism. During the ten years between [his] departure from Think and sobering up, it
explains, is an almost total blank (41). Reading the Gordian Knot of True Homosexual
Experiences takes a great deal of patience.
Ironically, a much longer book might have been needed to trace the depth of this contrary
and peculiar figure. That, however, may be the Knausgrdian zeitgeist, demanding histories
represented in breakfasts. Merely an effect of the Information Age on literature that Jones very
pursuit attempts to refute as necessity. His raw, intellectually anarchic, and emotionally attached
disposition is fitting of Boyd McDonalds Straight To Hell, composed entirely of fan submitted
sex stories and violently counterculture drawings (swastikas adorned the earliest issues). Zine
men as different as Gore Vidal and Robert Mapplethorpe admired and supported, although only
the latter was willing to let that be known. But among the several famous figures Jones uses to
invoke the infamous invisible man are ones he never met, including Alfred Kinsey, who
developed a scalar method for measuring sexuality as he was also convinced of the poverty of
labels and the wide variation of human desires (88), and the long dead Robert Burton
whose The Anatomy of Melancholy is quoted as the books epigraph (one must needs scratch
where it itches) and bears a remarkable resemblance to Straight To Hell as an anatomya
satire that overwhelms its targets by piling up an enormous amount of erudition and
constructing an encyclopedic farrago (194). In a further irony, this impulse for enormous
amounts of erudition and circuitous routes can often overwrite the more integral renegade
function of lacunae and antiestablishment behavior which Boyd stood for.
At this point, the discussion, rather than seeking to propel Boyd McDonald into some
post-human technological future, begins the most grueling section of an intellectual biography
about a porn art alcoholic who crafted pamphlets from lightly edited sex stories from overly
willing gay men, will make an historical turn and undertake a search for precedents. Note an
historical article usage so professorial it is an artifact of the 18th and 19th centuries. But, to the
point: his discussion of Robert Burton turns into an interpretation via Northrop Fryes An
Anatomy of Criticism into an explanation of Menippean Satires origin and meaning into a
description of Greek Cynicism (in particular Diogenes of Sinope) into Lucian of Samostas
Menippean Satire of Diogenes of Sinope, before returning to Boyd McDonald and his writing as
representative of cynical living and anatomical writing. But by now we are aware that Boyd
McDonald was an underground artist and mentally ill (187). These last twenty pages seem an
inappropriate attempt to philosophize into a box the man who insulted the elitist gay liberals of
his time by saying they write the way Liberace dresses (124), and an off-key way to
memorialize a man who left behind a biography intended for public consumption [that] revealed
little (9).
Seeing an image of the 1981 Boyd McDonald looking like a derelict, yet there was
something prim and proper about him (85) juxtaposed with one of the photos proffered to him
for one of his publications, Rimmers Digest (a naked man hiding his face behind his leg while
his penis lilts leftward in the center of the frame, the shadowy ballsack behind it) (87) is
what True Homosexual Experiences is about. Its about the flashbulb existence of a truly
degenerate true artist; an Ivy League Fuck-Up, as Jones calls him, or an Outsider Porn Artist
as John Waters might (114), for whom Truth was the biggest turn-on (29). And while
William E. Jones may not perfectly capture this in his stodgy passion, he gives us a glance as
grand as will probably ever be seen of this man. Its why you scroll through a porn site for
home videos, why Boyd McDonalds pamphlets were more invitations than creations, why
William E. Jones looks for the pieces of lost idols. Not for the thrill of the truth, but the thrill of
the truths exposure.

Justin Goodman earned his B.A. in Literature from SUNY Purchase. He is currently the
Assistant Fiction Editor at Boston Accent Lit and Assistant Reviews Editor at Newfound. His
writing--published, among other places, in Cleaver Magazine, TwoCities Review, and Prairie
Schooner--is accessible from justindgoodman.com.
Review by J.K. Shawhan of Many Full Hands Applauding
Inelegantly
Many Full Hands Applauding Inelegantly by Darren C.
Demaree
Published by 8th House Publishing

"I gave up smoking / so that there would be / one less

way to find me,"

What do you get when you take titles away from poems?
Darren C. Demaree's newest collection of poems comes
in three parts, where the poems in each sequence share a
title. Individual titles are hints that Demaree did not give
to the meaning of his poems, and there is one less way,
as his first poem in this collection agrees, to find the
poet's message.

Instead, there are just the words beneath where the titles
should be and we readers are left to use those to
decipher what the poet means, so grab the book, sit
down, and get ready to read.

The first sequence of poems in his collection is about the

many sounds you encounter in life, whether outside
noise or just the chaos in your head. There are the
sounds you try to make to describe a woman, the words
of anger (which are often better left unsaid), the noises
of an acquaintance thankfully absent from your vacation
away from them, and the creeping noises inside of
yourself expressing fear and anxiety. This last one,
Demaree excellently described, is the sound of being
gagged and pushed by a thousand hands. Maybe
afterwards they clapped inelegantly, like the title of the
collection implies?

Specifically, "A Violent Sound in Almost Every Place

#62" depicts a narrator pleading for silence, except for
one sound of extreme pain and one sound of extreme
love because, we are left to infer, any other sounds are
unimportant.

But again, not all sounds are audible. There is the sound
within ourselves that "A Violent Sound In Almost Every
Place #119" tells a story about, which is the sound
within ourselves that drives us to try to be the center of
attention. This is something that comes from within our
souls, yet in society today it is so loud, it escapes to the
outside. You must admit it, even if you don't admit it to
yourself until you read Demaree's poems, but there is
something inside of all of us, screaming to make
ourselves the star.

The next sequence features the great "we," the group

applauding inelegantly together. But what are we
applauding? The need to live on, trying to fly before you
know how to land, the possibility of reincarnation, the
struggle with faith, and much more.

Then the last sequence, All the Birds Are Leaving,

features fear and death heavily, as well as how "We
strain, always, / for a message / from the stars" as well
as how we make monsters to call ourselves heroes.
To capture the sound of society applauding inelegantly,
Demaree touched on many of our fears, everyday
thoughts, aspirations, and struggles, and divided them
into three sections, in one poetry collection. We are all
afraid of being chucked, like "the birds / that could not
sing / fast enough" and most, if not all, of us spend our
lives looking for answers. The thoughts and sounds of
living, if meshed together, would make a confused,
unpolished sound.

His sequences aren't complete, though. For example,

Demaree's collection jumps from We Are Arrows #100
to We Are Arrows #109, like there is nothing between,
or like there is something between that just slipped
through the cracks of the pages. We may not know what
was written in these missing poems, but we do know
that Darren C. Demaree knows something about living.
Review by J.K. Shawhan of Look Where She Points
Look Where She Points by Basil O' Contributor Emily Vieweg
Published by Plan B Press
Purchase here:
http://www.planbpress.com/store/p26/Look_Where_She_Points.html

"These hunters will not take her cubs away today."

Look Where She Points is a chapbook of a Mama Tiger and how she
grew up strong enough to forgive, apologize, write poetry, and take
care of two kids with special needs. Suffering from learning "The
Truth About Santa Claus," bipolar disorder, and having an ankle
tattoo of a woman's name who probably doesn't remember her name
has not stopped the poet, Emily Vieweg, from writing her collection
and living her life.

In her collection, Vieweg paints a picture of a woman who has

grieved many times, and owns pink earbuds "because they were
cheaper than green." She understands what it's like to have to move
on from love and what it's like to be bound to a type of life, like a
fountain pen locked in a purse. She is a woman who "earned every
single silver hair."

In the center of her chapbook is a poem titled "Curve." Despite pain

and challenges life has thrown at her, Vieweg uses the center of her
collection to show how fierce she is. She is a woman who takes her
time, like an hourglass.

Look Where She Points is a short chapbook, and a quick read for
anyone interested in learning all that is included in being a woman,
as well as a human being. I would recommend this chapbook in
anyone who is interested in poetry and reading work by strong,
modern women.